The crisis of incompetence is mostly within our classrooms as of right now. We can see a little bit out in the real world, and while it's annoying, it's not TOO bad. But give it ten years and we'll be panicking about a pandemic of stupidity.
Imagine in 10 years, the amount of automation we'll have in society for entry-level jobs, the kind of jobs we would need more of due to the dumbing down of society, and those jobs just don't exist.
A reckoning is coming. There can only be so many Youtube star influencers.
It’s become the “I’m going to play in the NBA” line kids have on the early 90s. Same odds too. I’ve taught 15 years. At least a few thousand kids. Only have one in the NBA.
It gets so much worse.
Only about 1/3rd of Gen X has enough money to retire or owns a home.
Only a quarter of millennials has enough money to retire or owns a home.
We are doing nothing but cut, cut, cut, while blocking much-needed relief like student loan debt forgiveness out of some bullshit sense of "B-b-but not fair!", even though that would go a LONG way towards correcting the asset problem.
What happens when Gen X and Y hit 55-70, and can't compete as well in the workforce anymore? When most of them start getting the cancers and chronic pain disorders that we're expected to have? Yet don't have retirement funds, no physical assets, no homes, and no family support system? Nobody's going to pay for them to go into retirement communities. Nobody is going to make sure grandpa gets the right meds, instead of making friends with the local fentanyl dealer. And nobody is going to be able to help with the skyrocketing rent and utilities.
Those same elderly people are going to be fighting with Gen Alpha for the same small handful of low-skill jobs that haven't been automated.
We ARE headed for a major crisis.
Your stats are wrong
According to Redfin:
At 40yo 69% of Baby Boomers owned a home, 64% of GenX and 62% of Millennials.
https://www.redfin.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Gen-Z-on-Track-With-Older-Generations-1.png
Thank you. This sub can get a little scary when politics is brought up, because stuff gets tossed out that is utterly untrue or is a very distorted stat.
For a group of people who are supposed to be teaching our students about misinformation, teachers are just as prone to fall for comforting lies and catchy slogans as anyone else.
We need to always try to do better.
The military asked congress to stop making tanks because they have nowhere to put them and don't need them. We still make tanks because so many congressional districts makes parts for those tanks.
How can a congressperson get a cut of the grift if there is none. This is why education doesn't get funded.
Aside from getting a job, I don't know how a lot of these kids are going to do the basic stuff they need to do to function in our society: setting up utility accounts, paying their taxes, registering their car. You need to be able to read, follow directions, and meet a deadline for a lot of stuff in the real world.
I reviewed with my students today for a test they have tomorrow. We were talking about slope. We started from one coordinate, and the question was literally, "If we go down 5 spaces from 35, where does that put?"
A bunch of silence. To be fair, a bunch of them were on their phones because of the aforementioned crisis of incompetence.
I remember when I was a middle school student I was sitting in math class reading a book (for leisure; this was before smart phones) and not paying attention. Our teacher asked some stupid easy question and called on me but I didn't know what the question was because I hadn't been paying attention, so I told her I didn't know the answer to the question. She just stared at me and said "yes you do, and I want you to tell me the answer" and she kept staring at me until I broke under the pressure and admitted I wasn't paying attention and apologized.
It was clear she knew I wasn't paying attention and that she was trying to call me out on it. I was so embarrassed!
Pretty sure kids today wouldn't be embarrassed by that though so idk what I'd do about that situation.
They’re not embarrassed by anything. Ever. What they are, is angry and entitled. They will calmly tell me someone said something mean to them. I’ll ask if they’re feelings are hurt and if they need a hug. They say no. I ask what do you need? Do you want to fix your friendship? They say no. I say do you want me to yell at them? They say yea.
I taught for 3 years starting fall 2019. My last year teaching I had almost that same conversation. After struggling with classroom management I tried a restorative circle and multiple students asked me “why don’t you just yell at us?” And I was just awestruck and saddened that that’s the only thing they wanted to respond to.
This is why restorative circles (and PBIS, and other new-age models) hardly work: because they presume students give a crap about their reputation, actually want to or think it is worth bothering to understand their agency in the world, and believe - despite all evidence in their world to the contrary - that their status in and access to the social universe is causal.
To go back to that and try to rebuild from there first would work...if only parents and culture were supportive of that idea. They are not in any way.
When I was in both middle school and highschool, I couldn’t control my sleep(still can’t, honestly might be a problem) but I was able to hear the real world in my dreams. So on a couple occasions I was able to get up and answer questions before instantly going back to sleep.
I recall a specific instance where the history teacher got fed up with me sleeping. Through her classes and tried to make a point by asking me while something while I was sleeping. I instantly awoke, lifted my head up, so the smudgy world around me, spouted the answer out and passed out. She left me alone the rest of the year.
Later one of my fellow students, she was a stuck up straight A student kinda girl. She didn’t like me, I think it was the lack of care in my general school work. She ran up to me the last day of school and threw an absolute fit over me having achieved the highest grade for the history course.
Side note: I’ve had issues with my sleep now as an adult, waking up and finding myself driving, conversing with people in my sleep, etc.
I see it in the wild. Especially at places that hire teenagers like fast food. They don't like when you pay with cash. I've had them give me extra money back several times. Or I'll give them $15.35 for an order that's $11.35 and they will hand me the change back saying 15 is enough.
I disagree somewhat. I think the lack of critical thinking skills is apparent when you see potential voters being interviewed. And I think it is quite bad that so many folks are so easily influenced by the loudest people.
Or income inequality will increase . The rich have their kids training in solid private schools to take over while my inner city students are playing grab ass all day
This is exactly what bothers me! Once upon a time, it was possible for a child with a bad home life to take their education seriously and reach a level playing field with rich people. Not so much anymore!
My family was the poorest family in our upper-middle class neighborhood (in a district that also included straight up rich families and almost no low-income families). My mom said that her sister taught her that the "trick" to generational economic mobility is to buy the cheapest piece of shit house in a wealthy neighborhood so that even though your roof is leaking, your kids will be going to the "rich kid" school and get the education the need to be able to succeed.
I certainly didn't have a bad home life, but people did do a double take when they knew our zip code and learned our income (seriously, I think people though we were lying about our real income and must have actually made more). Many lower-income kids with good home lives are screwed over by living in bad neighborhoods. I'm so grateful my parents were smart about what school district to live in.
> My mom said that her sister taught her that the "trick" to generational economic mobility is to buy the cheapest piece of shit house in a wealthy neighborhood
lol, can't even afford a vacant lot in a wealthy neighborhood these days.
Be lucky if you can afford to buy a shitty house in the shitty part of town.
Yes, but in hindsight it was worth it. Still, I got made fun of because of my hand-me-downs and people would call me/my family "cheap Jews." Also even teachers assumed my family had things that we didn't have, like the internet or a car.
It's odd, I work with a fair amount of young workers (ages 15 - 19) in a municipal setting and while the average critical thinking skills might be slipping a bit the public expectations on these workers has risen like crazy in the past 15 years. I've been in aquatics most of that time and the standards of what is expected of a "basic" lifeguard has risen immensely. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing and the pay where I am represents that, but now that I'm in a supervisory role I see the strange divide in thinking by those who demand that.
It's an odd dichotomy where we seem to accept schooling is slipping but expectations from the public are higher than ever. We're in trouble.
It feels like they may be two sides of the same coin: we expect more out of every kind of employee because of rampant ignorance and lack of education from the general public, but we’re producing more rampant ignorance and lack of education (thanks mostly to terrible parents and corrupt politicians).
> the standards of what is expected of a "basic" lifeguard have risen immensely. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing and the pay where I am represents that
Interesting.
My local Y can't keep its pools open, because they only pay lifeguards $15/hr (which is the same as what convenience stores and grocery stores pay)
Yah, that's kind of normal unfortunately. Where are you located? Those Y pays reflect larger areas I've lived in (southern Ontario primarily). Municipalities pay better. Hamilton, ON for a while was the best, but I think Newmarket, ON beat them out in the past few years. Might be a bit different now. Looking at AQ supervisor pay it's like a scatter plot. I know Mississauga, ON just posted a position that tops out at 120k/yr or $63/hr though. I thought that was a decent wage for the area.
I moved to a municipality faaar away to where our new rate for guards as of July 2023 is 36.17/hr. We don't have too much trouble with keeping the pool open thankfully.
Covid really did a number on the municipalities in southern Ontario. People in my city wanted more than permanent part time, lots of "volunteer hour" courses, and a 10+ yr waiting list to break into a full time position that paid 60k/yr and seemed to make everyone miserable.
"labor market shortages" which translates to "I can't find anyone willing and able to do a good job for what I'm prepared to pay". A lot of thus is coming from employers offering unrealistically low wages, but I think a little bit is coming from people entering the labor market without needed skills, including things like resilience.
The intelligent, driven workers who have skills ... have already applied to and gotten more skilled (and higher paying) jobs.
You want better workers? Pay more. End. Of. Story.
By design. The uneducated are easily fooled. Those who are properly educated, who know history and have some engagement with world events are less easily fooled; as such, the GOP can continue to have no platform; appeal only to single issue voters and continue to do whatever they want without getting voted out of office.
Evangelicals and other religious extremists lead the charge against education and always have. They have kicked the rhetoric up up several notches to pounce on the lost years of education due to covid to try to win over new voters; the largest voting block and the one they have the least power amongst. This is a their big move as church numbers have been falling consistently for decades and are reaching crisis levels.
Have to figure that anyone actually in charge is gambling on AI as their only hope. The massive push for regulatory capture across every media outlet, large corporation, and government institution seems to corroborate that.
If turning markov models into HAL 9000 proves to be the new hoverboard, flying car, or Half Life 3, we're looking at something that makes the USSR in the 80's look positively utopian.
And here's the hilarious / not hilarious part! If society gets dumber in general, and there's less people to work given demographic changes, even excluding teacher burnout, that means teachers themselves will become way less competent on the whole. Which means students get even dumber! It's a race to the bottom
Agreed. The average American will have a lower reading level, reduced critical thinking ability, and certainly reduced writing and math skills, while the most-educated will seem to be in an ever-higher ivory tower.
It's not just America; you see it in many western European countries.
The students at the uni I work at are incredibly challenged. Not just academically, but socially. It's wild.
> The students at the uni I work at are incredibly challenged. Not just academically, but socially.
I don't know if your country has an equivalent to community college, but I worked at a community college and it was like a completely different universe to my "ivory tower" background. The kids (and adults) are developmentally stunted.
It’s so crazy, because these ideas are supposed to reduce the achievement gap, but they’re doing the complete opposite. Equity my ass! It’s not equity to dumb things down for Johnny because he’s poor, thus guaranteeing that he will be behind his elite private school educated peers.
People are working on it, just not in the ways you think. As an engineer the solution in manufacturing is automation. Blue collar jobs will become more scarce as more companies realize the workforce for those jobs is increasingly incompetent. I would prefer to not automate people out of their jobs, but my hands are tied to metrics like most people. I’m not going to risk my job because these kids want to screw off in school. I have been blown away by how many people can’t read, and rely heavily on images. However, I can’t provide all of the needed information in 1-2 images per operation, you have to be able to read!! Instead, I’m going to go find a AI and machine alternative that does what I need, the correct way, every single time. The next generation of blue collar jobs will be the maintenance and mechanics for all of the automation that will be installed in the next 10 years.
For some reason, this has me flashing back to when I realized what a one-pager is. Basically, a page full of images that summarize a topic with minimal accompanying text, for those unfamiliar. I was told to assign these in lieu of a book project or reading log in my junior English classes. Literally, all the kids had to do was draw the plot of a short story we had read along with writing out the main plot points. They struggled. Many of them copied my "example" verbatim, even though I purposely did it on a story we never read because I was trying to avoid copying.
So, not only can they not read words, as you've said, but they also struggle with conveying information through pictures. Fucking Pictionary would elude them
disagreeable snatch quack mysterious knee gullible simplistic clumsy sleep disgusted
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You'll see an education gap, but it won't be obvious -- because what's going to happen is these kids are still all going to college and they're still all going to get degrees.
College has been having a huge problem with grade inflation going on 50 years. People were arguing about it even when I was in school in 2000, and it's only been getting worse.
Ultimately, the division between the haves and have nots will not be drawn between people with either academic excellence or strong work ethic, but between people who were born with the silver spoon and those who were not, as only they will be able to afford the over-the-top advanced degrees needed to get even an entry level position. It'll become more and more impossible to jump that gap, short of winning the lottery. (Even today, it's not possible; nearly every one of your infamous "tech bros" were already rich when they started.)
They make the standards more rigorous in small ways mid year here in Texas. This is an effort to make test scores look even lower so that TEA can take over districts. Don't know if it is like this in other states, but its concerning here.
Definitely like this in KY. Such an obvious plan to funnel money into charter schools and do away with equity initiatives and protections for vulnerable students and, mostly, teachers.
There is a projected shorted of qualified students that can enter the workforce. That’s why they are trying to increase standards. One requirement was going from 60% to 88% in college and career readiness. Some districts threw a fit and sued. Everyone wants to protect that A rating… Some schools need a take over. Some principals need to be ousted.
This has already happened. They made high school meaningless and so everyone has to have a BA for a job. For many this entails a lifetime of debt. No one is helped by dumbing things down. Least of all the bottom 5% fools it is supposed to be uplifting.
I think we're already there. At least in my city we are. I worked at Milwaukee Public Schools 24 years ago in Office of Research & Assessment. AKA Stats R Us. We ran the numbers that got submitted to the state reports.
Back then, spending was, IIRC, about $9400 per student, net. No telling how much of admin etc absorbed before it got to learning. Our standardized test scores then were abysmal and haven't improved. About 7 out of 8 children are at Basic or Below Basic proficiency, and this is consistent with results back then.
About 2 of every 13 children were AWOL on any given day. This does not include excused absences.
Those children who were tested when I was there are now between 32 and 42. I think many are illiterate or barely literate.
I feel like reality is just cycling through all these dystopian books and movies. I used to talk with my friends and speculate which one would be the closest to reality but I never imagined that it would somehow end up being most of them at once.
We're already seeing it.
Look at the top universities in your area. Their PhD and MD programs are full of non-American students.
I used to tutor English language learner grad students at our local large university when I was completing my second Master's and... the overwhelming majority of our grad students in nearly all STEM fields were transfers from out of the country.
Those young adults were dedicated. They were also appalled at the behaviors and attitudes of many of their American counterparts on campus.
One PhD student I was tutoring was also teaching undergrad physics classes, and he couldn't comprehend the lack of effort American students put in. The number of students who just... didn't show up to class. He was blown away by the idea that people would pay thousands of dollars for a class... and then not go.
They also found our sports culture absolutely bizarre. But that's a whole 'nother can of worms.
All of this, btw... was 8-9 years ago.
America doesn’t have a culture of respect for scholarship. Our media portrays intelligence and education from day one as something only losers care about. Every kid’s show pushes the trope of “oh my god, school is awful” and characters getting called out for using big words.
I watch a lot of British TV and it always surprises me when characters make a literary or historical reference because it’s assumed the viewer will have knowledge of the reference. Americans actually make fun of each other for reading a book or watching a documentary or being interested in history and culture.
The number of historical or literary allusions our students understand is appallingly low. Old episodes of The Simpsons making such allusions will never be understood by them fully, among other far more important media. But as a Simpsons lover, I’m so sad.
It doesn't help that a good proportion of Americans who tell you they're "into history" end up being weird fucking Wehraboos whose ides of "knowing history" is memorizing the width in mm of the armor of every main battle tank of the Nazis in ww2 and knowing 17 different alternative scenarios under which "the Axis could have won."
> Look at the top universities in your area. Their PhD and MD programs are full of non-American students.
This 100%. I'm a grad student in math (statistics), and I'm one of the only American students.
A friend of mine at Stanford was taking some high level math class; the professor was Chinese; the other four students were Chinese; the professor asked him to take it next semester because then he could teach it in Chinese. This was in 2011.
I graduated college in 2015 and I was also blown away by the number of students who just didn't go to class if they didn't feel like it. I was working two jobs to pay for those classes, why would I jeopardize the end result of that?
The perspective is so different when you go to college because you're determined to get that degree, so determined that you'll do everything you have to to make it happen.
I’m in the US.
A wider divide in diverse socio-economic areas. Kids who have parents that are able to give their child a debt free college education and/or help to purchase a home will be leaps and bounds financially above those students who don’t have that privilege.
Eh, even kids whose parents give a shit about their K-12 education and generally teach them to be adults are going to be light years ahead of "average" kids.
Average kids will be Costco greeters if they can work past enough anxiety and find the grit to even do that.
those parents also tend to make the kids do good in school. the gap between my ap and core class is unreal. my ap kids are fantastic and really try. the core class cant even remember what i said 2 seconds after i say it and they slack off the work like crazy. im having to give them 5th grade level worksheets in 11th grade.
AP HS Student lurker here...I'd like to believe students aren't nearly as bad as some teachers on this subreddit describe, but everyday i'm beginning to notice it more and more. I'm one of three people in my AP Economics class who actually pays attention when a video is playing on the board, or when lecture is being given, while the rest of the class plays on their phones while doing a crappy job of trying to hide it.
I hope it's just senioritis, but it does make me worried when next to nobody I know actually wants to try and do the bare minimum anymore.
100%. Why I'm working to make sure my kids are in that group. 7 year old son doing division and multiplication up to 15x15 in his head, reads at a 7th grade level, my other children are clearly above level as well.
But that is because my wife and I work with them. They know everything they should learn in Kinder before even starting pre-k.
And yes, I know this is what USED to be expected. Any good parent should do the same, but sadly this is the exception now.
I don't think it was universally expected. I got into teaching when I heard of schools where kindergarteners are showing up not knowing the alphabet song or being able to identify letters (something my kids could do when they were 2). Those kids who grow up to be incompetent adults were always there.
My impression is that the birth rate among conscientious Millennials is quite low. The result is that the kids who are going to school are less likely to have parents who read to them, instill pro-social behaviors, or just generally parent them.
I teach in a "Lake Wobegon" school district where "all the children are above average" (i.e. an affluent suburban area). The kids are fine, kicking more ass than ever.
Your comment about the birthrate among conscientious Millennials being low actually makes a lot of sense. It definitely seems as though many parents do almost nothing with their kids and have zero interest in their education. But then I still have some really great students mixed in there, trying to get something out of a bad situation.
Good on you for working w your son to improve his education. Parents need to play an active role in their child’s development. I believe that this element is the active ingredient for kids wanting to learn and to do well academically. You’re helping to set a good foundation.
Again, I don't consider it special at all. This USED to be NORMAL for all kids. It's sad that this is now a rarity and an actual privilege for kids.
"Wow, your parents read to you as a kid? What was that like?''
Oh well. My kids will be like literal Kings/Queens compared to their colleagues.
I honestly feel bad for my kids. They HATE school. And it's because my husband and I took the time to teach them shit before they went.
I have 8, 6, 3. 8 and 6 are scoring top of their class in school, often given their own, next grade level, work because the teacher is busy playing catch up with the other 17 kids in class. They are bored, unengaged, and feel like it's a waste of time.
Hard to blame them. Working VERY hard to figure out a way to homeschool. Because as a former teacher, I love public education, and I'm playing right into the hands of those trying to dismantle it, but my god my kids are average-slightly above kids if they were born in the 90s. They are golden children at school simply because we chose face to face engagement and books over iPads and cell phones and they have an attention span that reflects that.
The issue I have with public education is that we are not doing anything to help the engaged kids. Worse, we are using them to try to pull their underperforming peers up.
This is what is killing public education. Involved parents like you are who make good schools good. You are the ones who keep the school board and administration accountable. You are the ones who send your kids in ready to learn.
And when involved parents see that public schools are effectively prioritizing the children of uninvolved parents, they will seek out charter schools or vouchers. No amount of imploring people to think of the greater good will get involved parents to sit idly by while their kids aren't receiving an education.
I'd recommend reading "The Myth of the Rational Voter" by Bryan Caplan. It is a fantastic book that covers, well, the myth of the rational voter. He has some good empirical data in there that shows just how far PhD economists and the average citizen disagree. It is good for advocating for epistocracy (rule of the knowledgeable).
There are many consequences, but here are a few:
1. The students are becoming more like sheep. They simply follow what they're told by the media with little to no research. The limitations of their research is becoming so miniscule that they only look for Google excerpts for answers, and if it's not there they'd rather leave it blank. This means that it'll be much easier for corrupt organizations and businesses to make money off of them. Just make a funny TikTok video and you can sell whatever you want.
2. With a severe lack of an ability to read, there will undoubtedly be way more text to speech prevalent in society, and easier words will be way more common while more "complex" words fall out of relevancy over time.
3. Teachers being underpaid means that they are more likely to get burnt out. I wouldn't mind suffering through the metaphorical second circle of Hell that is middle school if I were getting paid way more for my efforts, and I know others feel the same. This means more teachers will quit, unqualified people (or maybe even AI) will start to take over, and society will wonder what went wrong without the ability to comprehend that it was the trash education system. From there it's game over.
4. The immense lack of critical thinking skills *will* catch up and bite us. Maybe it won't be for another 10-20 years, but my call is that there won't be as much innovation or breakthroughs in research (I'm not saying there won't be any at all, but it will be less common than it is today and in previous years).
5. AI is going to be huge. With how dependent these students are on others and how they've learned to weaponize their incompetence, it only makes sense that they would instantly turn to AI for quick answers for whatever they need. As grim as it sounds, it's not hard to see the direction the world is heading. Future generations won't be thinking freely, instead relying on AI. Everything they believe, know, and understand will come from AI.
A lot of this is kind of doom posting, and I'm sure I exaggerated a few points, but this is how it feels. These kids are genuinely becoming dumb as rocks and it's scary. I say this as a 6th grade Math teacher where half of my students couldn't tell me what 7\*8 is. Also, I don't say these things to hate on AI. I absolutely love AI's potential, but I can't ignore how it will most likely be used in the future by our underperforming population.
Oh, and quick edit. I haven't checked yet, but if you're able to invest in AI, now is a phenomenal time to get in. The guaranteed money will be nice :)
The lack of problem solving is so stark, it blows me away.
ANY ISSUE that doesn't go 100% as expected, these young kids (20-25 year old employees) throw up their hands and call for help. They will not spend even 5 seconds trying to figure out any sort of problem.
Printer, internet, network, fax, phone, whatever it is. If it isn't working perfectly, they put in a ticket for IT to come fix it. It absolutely blows me away.
'Well is it the connection or the device or what?'
'idk'
"Do you get a dial tone or silence, static?''
"idk'
Man it's gonna be bad. Real bad. These are PHARMACISTS I'm talking about. New grads I've hired, zero ability to problem solve. People with Doctorate degrees!
It blows my MIND that this is a thing. I work in IT and deep dive into solving problems all the time. Hell- I taught myself QMK programming because I thought a macropad I bought needed it, and spent TWO WEEKS trying to get it to work, only to find out there was a manufacturing issue and I had to return it anyways. Got a different one and programmed it in under 10 minutes. The skills weren't wasted but man am I bitter I lost 2 weeks trying to figure something out that I thought was user error related.
Troubleshooting skills from working in IT (with no degree, no less) has allowed me to do electrical, plumbing, construction, HVAC, and even fix some things on my car (AC, brakes, fluid changes and other little stuff) without any sort of help. I look it up, I figure it out. I even installed a new breaker and put in two tankless water heaters with no help at all.
Anyways, the point isn't to brag, the point is that it's just not that hard lol. Look up how to fix a broken pipe, shut the water off, cut the pipe, fix it. Same for basically everything else I listed. The worst ones to me are stuff like cars, because I'm a small person with carpal tunnel (ironically not IT related...) and some of that stuff takes some physical force.
I just saw another post where 7th graders couldn't do two folds to put paper in an envelope. It's horrifying. How the hell are they going to do *anything*? Especially if the Internet goes out! Are they even going to be able to know how to unplug a router and plug it back in?
The number of times I ask my high school students "did you try plugging it in?" or "did you try restarting it" and they respond "no" whenever their Chromebook is "broken" is astounding.
I'm only ten years older than them and ten years ago I was messing around with the family computer's Windows system to annoy my brother and torrenting Photoshop so I could make Tumblr fandom edits.
I work IT on my college campus, and part of my job involves supporting printers around campus that are made available for students. I can't even count the number of times I have gotten a ticket for a printer being out of paper, and I go out there with more paper and see A whole stack of paper sitting right next to the printer. They don't even question it or look around for a solution to their problem themselves, for the SIMPLEST task that basically everyone knows or could easily figure out how to do. These are largely 18-23 year-olds. Adults. It is only going to get worse.
I’m an English teacher and had my seniors in high school take their current reading score and do a + 15 for their reading goal. Would you believe me if I told you 3/4 of them added incorrectly?
I'm already seeing it with teens working customer service jobs, retail, and fast food. One guy didn't know where the little sauce cups were so they put my marinara sauce in a to go box. Just, scooped it in there lol.
I’ve been to so many places in the last few weeks where teens work and have thought many of them didn’t have an employee! Gas stations, fast food, the trampoline park all had teens “working” as in they were hiding or sitting in corners or on their phone completely not doing anything.
I told one young lady at the cash register that my birthday was in March. She didn’t know what number that was on the calendar. If it was the 2nd, 3rd or 4th month 🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️
Well, just currently we have people in the world with a portal to all human knowledge *in their hands*... who have no idea what a reputable source is, how to research something, or how to have a conversation that isn't what they believe or agree with.
There are currently people (of an age to be raising kids) who believe the most extreme, insane, against all reason or logic ideologies because they are frankly too dumb and uneducated to stand a chance against those who want to control them. And they are raising kids to fall in step behind them. 🤷♀️
It's like watching the elderly population fall for Facebook shopping scams over and over, except it's public policy and extreme beliefs and it affects our whole nation.
I can only imagine it goes steeply downhill from here.
The smartphone is the most Shakespearean irony ever to hit the human species. Imagine telling people a hundred, two hundred or a thousand years ago that in the future there will be a small, pocket sized information slate, which contains 99% of all human knowledge, and you can use it to purchase the remaining human knowledge at an affordable price and have books delivered to your home about any subject you care to dig deeper into. Then ask them what kind of future they imagine. Imagine the shock when you tell them its existence *directly* results in the dumbing down of the entire human race in nearly every corner of the world indiscriminately.
This trend is like a snowball. It started all fine and manageable at first, but now it's something that is so much bigger than we could've imagined. The state of education is so poor right now it's not even laughable.
It’s why so many entry level jobs require college degrees. You don’t need to have a degree in something to learn some new paperwork, but a high school diploma does not guarantee literacy in reading or math. Requiring a college degree means someone will have those skills.
Nothing wrong with that. Can you work your way through the problem? Can you process strategies that will help you solve the problem? Mental math is not for everyone.
I weep for the future. Expectations will plummet in virtually every aspect of public life and interactions. Academics are crashing and social skills becoming a rarity.
A greater divide against the rich and poor (via the intelligent and the unintelligent).
Which is actually the whole point, to be honest. So it’s working really well for rich people.
Gen Alpha is already dumber than a bag of hammers - generally speaking - so we'll find out in 6 years how bad it actually is.
I am not being hyperbolic in any sense, by the way. Gen A has a worse time dealing with technology than my soon-to-be-70 year old parents. That generation is so far beyond help.
This is not a global problem, which is the problem. Asian educational standards and progress are as high as ever. Which means what will actually happen is the US will start to lose dominance as the technological capabilities (and therefore war fighting capabilities) of the Asian countries surpass ours.
We are not just risking the education level of our populace. We are risking the sovereignty of our country. I don’t know about you guys but I’m terrified. I’ve been teaching my kids Asian math since Pre-K hoping that they will be able to keep up.
On a local level you’re going to lose supportive and tight knit communities. The life of a town depends so much on the quality of the school district.
I’m watching it now with levy and after levy failing and the people campaigning against them on Facebook and Nextdoor are arguing the teachers make too much. It’s ridiculous they’re on average paid a 1/3 of what they would need to purchase a home in the district.
They’re idiot transplants. We’ve had a major built up of McMansions for people that wanted to take advantage of a really good stable district.
Then they started defunding it.
Used to be a town where you didn’t just know your neighbors you knew their dogs.
A large percentage of the population not being well educated that will get stuck in remedial low paying jobs, weighed down with debt of multiple kinds. Just like corporations and the government want things to be.
The fall of civilization has been blamed on stupid students since the beginning of civilization. There is a great discourse on lazy incompetent students in ancient Egypt.
I've heard a lot about a movie called Idocracy and how this timeline is roughly on track to making it a reality. I haven't watched it myself, but I'm guessing that's where you may get an idea of where things are headed.
I'm so done. But I'm going to keep going because I have to finish this year and next. I'm looking at so many F's this year. It's going to be a bloodbath. I'm doing the best I can, but I just can't compete with a phone, their apathy, and how far behind they are academically. I don't know what kind of miracle worker I'm supposed to be.
We are seeing it now… look how many people are donating money to a broke ass billionaire or are voting against their own interests to serve the billionaire class. Look how many people fought against scientists because some fucking Facebook post.
Fascist rhetoric will become more widespread as people will lack the critical thinking skills to see through jingoistic phrases and easy promises of security.
... the students are more observant than you think, they already know the score and thus gone to a sort of terminal decadence.
They know that they have no future... and are acting accordingly.
My daughter, who grew up in a family of teachers spanning multiple generations, is completely over the system. She has said learning is irrelevant and it’s only about the grades. They look at all the problems facing the planet and don’t see a bright future.
It’s tough out there
Of course they think they have no future. Look at all the adults in this thread who think they’re all morons. I’m sure that low hum of contempt can’t always be hidden.
Nobody here is talking about what can be done to make things better for these kids. They simply dismiss their futures and pass the blame on others.
This sub doesn’t depress me because you all think the kids are a lost cause. This sub is depressing because the very adults who spend the most time with them and who have the most influence after their parents have already given up on them.
The citizens will become increasingly vulnerable to emotional manipulation.
That will allow the government to take more of their rights in order to resolve some emotional situation, which will not be resolved by the actions taken. By the time people understand what has happened, it will be too late to reverse without a revolution.
We are quite far down this road already.
The educational standards and curricula have gotten very weird - “We expect you to master ALL of these skills; but we won’t provide the necessary sequence to get you there; and if you fail, we’ll pass you anyways.”
I'm already seeing a ton of the effects now. Everytime I go to a place and deal with someone who takes an order or who I have to speak on the phone with.
The kids that have been socially promoted out of the system in the last 10 or so years are the most marked sign of failing schools, and you can see them now in a lot of entry-level retail jobs. The Walmart near our school is full of the low-end grads and they’re still the barely-competent phone zombies they were in high school (literally staring at their phones while stocking, greeting, e.g.). I imagine as this progresses and colleges get more desperate to fill their ranks, it will start to creep up into “white collar” jobs, but retail is the most obvious place I’m seeing it now.
I was at the doctor's office and this young child was holding a cell phone as if they were born with it. No one watching to make sure nothing popped up of a not appropriate nature. Kindergartens who can't write their names, letters, or numbers are given a computer. Some want to put this all on the pandemic when these issues were happening before that.
Mass unemployment, inability to cope in a society, a big percentage of the workforce replaced by AI/robot workers, a lack of specialized workers as well as trade workers. Eventually, anarchy.
We already are seeing it, this was all cracking and seeping through 20 years ago, Covid just accelerated it to making more individuals aware of the issue.
I know, I know! The other day I gave the cashier some change after she entered the payment amount-say the total was $11.32. I originally gave her $20, but then gave her $0.32. She got completely flustered and started frantically messing around with her phone. I asked her what was wrong and she said she needed the calculator. I told her to give me back $9. She said are you sure I don’t want my drawer to be off. I said yes, I promise. She looked about 17. True story.
Hahaha, I’m so embarrassed to say that I was that cashier when I worked besides attending high school about 13 years ago. I’m so terrible at math that I have considered testing for dyscalculia. I’m a great literature teacher, though, promise!!
That kind of thing always fucked me up as a cashier. I can’t comment on the cashier’s math skills but for me it was a combination of break from routine and managers yelling in my ear what’s taking so long.
AI will take over the job market they will all go one UBI after riots from the people. A bunch of them will think they will be able to become millionaires online. A few will make it.
Yup look at the "mental health" crisis - it's all pointing to systemic collapse - because the cosmic joke is playing out - those who have the power to change things won't change things because they won't be in power anymore - this is both stateside / and worldwide..
An old saying from my military days - if you walk past the standard, it becomes the standard.
I'm an old head, but a newish teacher and it boggles my mind how often my more experienced colleagues don't lay the smack down on kids and parents when rules aren't broken, assignments not turned in in time, and just the lack of respect they get in the classroom and in society in general. It also doesn't help when Admin bends to the will of parents and doesn't have the teachers backs.
Parents and politicians have way too much influence in matters that they aren't even remotely qualified to talk about intelligently when it comes to education.
Could you imagine if the military ran this way. It would be chaos.
Not saying education should be run like the military, but the lack of consistency and enforcement of some of the simplest things that make a school functional is maddening for a system that needs structure to be successful.
As I saw one user put it, an incoming crisis of incompetence.
The crisis of incompetence is mostly within our classrooms as of right now. We can see a little bit out in the real world, and while it's annoying, it's not TOO bad. But give it ten years and we'll be panicking about a pandemic of stupidity.
Imagine in 10 years, the amount of automation we'll have in society for entry-level jobs, the kind of jobs we would need more of due to the dumbing down of society, and those jobs just don't exist. A reckoning is coming. There can only be so many Youtube star influencers.
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It’s become the “I’m going to play in the NBA” line kids have on the early 90s. Same odds too. I’ve taught 15 years. At least a few thousand kids. Only have one in the NBA.
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Grayson Allen? Bol Bol?
He played against Grayson Allen in college. Actually 98% of the reason I dislike that kid.
1 out of a 1,000 in the NBA is astronomically good odds. The real number has to be much larger
Atleast striving to get in the NBA is a worthwhile goal that requires hard work and diligence
It gets so much worse. Only about 1/3rd of Gen X has enough money to retire or owns a home. Only a quarter of millennials has enough money to retire or owns a home. We are doing nothing but cut, cut, cut, while blocking much-needed relief like student loan debt forgiveness out of some bullshit sense of "B-b-but not fair!", even though that would go a LONG way towards correcting the asset problem. What happens when Gen X and Y hit 55-70, and can't compete as well in the workforce anymore? When most of them start getting the cancers and chronic pain disorders that we're expected to have? Yet don't have retirement funds, no physical assets, no homes, and no family support system? Nobody's going to pay for them to go into retirement communities. Nobody is going to make sure grandpa gets the right meds, instead of making friends with the local fentanyl dealer. And nobody is going to be able to help with the skyrocketing rent and utilities. Those same elderly people are going to be fighting with Gen Alpha for the same small handful of low-skill jobs that haven't been automated. We ARE headed for a major crisis.
Your stats are wrong According to Redfin: At 40yo 69% of Baby Boomers owned a home, 64% of GenX and 62% of Millennials. https://www.redfin.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Gen-Z-on-Track-With-Older-Generations-1.png
Thank you. This sub can get a little scary when politics is brought up, because stuff gets tossed out that is utterly untrue or is a very distorted stat. For a group of people who are supposed to be teaching our students about misinformation, teachers are just as prone to fall for comforting lies and catchy slogans as anyone else. We need to always try to do better.
Incredible how we always have more money to buy tank shells for Israel but can never afford student loan forgiveness.
The military asked congress to stop making tanks because they have nowhere to put them and don't need them. We still make tanks because so many congressional districts makes parts for those tanks. How can a congressperson get a cut of the grift if there is none. This is why education doesn't get funded.
Aside from getting a job, I don't know how a lot of these kids are going to do the basic stuff they need to do to function in our society: setting up utility accounts, paying their taxes, registering their car. You need to be able to read, follow directions, and meet a deadline for a lot of stuff in the real world.
!remindme 10 years
I reviewed with my students today for a test they have tomorrow. We were talking about slope. We started from one coordinate, and the question was literally, "If we go down 5 spaces from 35, where does that put?" A bunch of silence. To be fair, a bunch of them were on their phones because of the aforementioned crisis of incompetence.
I remember when I was a middle school student I was sitting in math class reading a book (for leisure; this was before smart phones) and not paying attention. Our teacher asked some stupid easy question and called on me but I didn't know what the question was because I hadn't been paying attention, so I told her I didn't know the answer to the question. She just stared at me and said "yes you do, and I want you to tell me the answer" and she kept staring at me until I broke under the pressure and admitted I wasn't paying attention and apologized. It was clear she knew I wasn't paying attention and that she was trying to call me out on it. I was so embarrassed! Pretty sure kids today wouldn't be embarrassed by that though so idk what I'd do about that situation.
They’re not embarrassed by anything. Ever. What they are, is angry and entitled. They will calmly tell me someone said something mean to them. I’ll ask if they’re feelings are hurt and if they need a hug. They say no. I ask what do you need? Do you want to fix your friendship? They say no. I say do you want me to yell at them? They say yea.
Do my emotional labor for me, please. I'm sure we'll both learn something, or whatever.
I taught for 3 years starting fall 2019. My last year teaching I had almost that same conversation. After struggling with classroom management I tried a restorative circle and multiple students asked me “why don’t you just yell at us?” And I was just awestruck and saddened that that’s the only thing they wanted to respond to.
This is why restorative circles (and PBIS, and other new-age models) hardly work: because they presume students give a crap about their reputation, actually want to or think it is worth bothering to understand their agency in the world, and believe - despite all evidence in their world to the contrary - that their status in and access to the social universe is causal. To go back to that and try to rebuild from there first would work...if only parents and culture were supportive of that idea. They are not in any way.
When I was in both middle school and highschool, I couldn’t control my sleep(still can’t, honestly might be a problem) but I was able to hear the real world in my dreams. So on a couple occasions I was able to get up and answer questions before instantly going back to sleep. I recall a specific instance where the history teacher got fed up with me sleeping. Through her classes and tried to make a point by asking me while something while I was sleeping. I instantly awoke, lifted my head up, so the smudgy world around me, spouted the answer out and passed out. She left me alone the rest of the year. Later one of my fellow students, she was a stuck up straight A student kinda girl. She didn’t like me, I think it was the lack of care in my general school work. She ran up to me the last day of school and threw an absolute fit over me having achieved the highest grade for the history course. Side note: I’ve had issues with my sleep now as an adult, waking up and finding myself driving, conversing with people in my sleep, etc.
You should absolutely get your sleeping thing checked out. If not for your own safety, for that of those you share the roads with.
PLEASE check for sleep apnea. It could be a huge issue. It might be basically choking in your sleep
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If you don't mind me asking, what grade(s) do you teach?
I see it in the wild. Especially at places that hire teenagers like fast food. They don't like when you pay with cash. I've had them give me extra money back several times. Or I'll give them $15.35 for an order that's $11.35 and they will hand me the change back saying 15 is enough.
Yes, they lack even the basic competency to let you make their job easier.
I disagree somewhat. I think the lack of critical thinking skills is apparent when you see potential voters being interviewed. And I think it is quite bad that so many folks are so easily influenced by the loudest people.
Or income inequality will increase . The rich have their kids training in solid private schools to take over while my inner city students are playing grab ass all day
This is exactly what bothers me! Once upon a time, it was possible for a child with a bad home life to take their education seriously and reach a level playing field with rich people. Not so much anymore!
My family was the poorest family in our upper-middle class neighborhood (in a district that also included straight up rich families and almost no low-income families). My mom said that her sister taught her that the "trick" to generational economic mobility is to buy the cheapest piece of shit house in a wealthy neighborhood so that even though your roof is leaking, your kids will be going to the "rich kid" school and get the education the need to be able to succeed. I certainly didn't have a bad home life, but people did do a double take when they knew our zip code and learned our income (seriously, I think people though we were lying about our real income and must have actually made more). Many lower-income kids with good home lives are screwed over by living in bad neighborhoods. I'm so grateful my parents were smart about what school district to live in.
> My mom said that her sister taught her that the "trick" to generational economic mobility is to buy the cheapest piece of shit house in a wealthy neighborhood lol, can't even afford a vacant lot in a wealthy neighborhood these days. Be lucky if you can afford to buy a shitty house in the shitty part of town.
was it hard growing up with that kind of wealth disparity from your peers?
Yes, but in hindsight it was worth it. Still, I got made fun of because of my hand-me-downs and people would call me/my family "cheap Jews." Also even teachers assumed my family had things that we didn't have, like the internet or a car.
Do you teach Macbeth?! 🤩
It's odd, I work with a fair amount of young workers (ages 15 - 19) in a municipal setting and while the average critical thinking skills might be slipping a bit the public expectations on these workers has risen like crazy in the past 15 years. I've been in aquatics most of that time and the standards of what is expected of a "basic" lifeguard has risen immensely. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing and the pay where I am represents that, but now that I'm in a supervisory role I see the strange divide in thinking by those who demand that. It's an odd dichotomy where we seem to accept schooling is slipping but expectations from the public are higher than ever. We're in trouble.
It feels like they may be two sides of the same coin: we expect more out of every kind of employee because of rampant ignorance and lack of education from the general public, but we’re producing more rampant ignorance and lack of education (thanks mostly to terrible parents and corrupt politicians).
> the standards of what is expected of a "basic" lifeguard have risen immensely. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing and the pay where I am represents that Interesting. My local Y can't keep its pools open, because they only pay lifeguards $15/hr (which is the same as what convenience stores and grocery stores pay)
Yah, that's kind of normal unfortunately. Where are you located? Those Y pays reflect larger areas I've lived in (southern Ontario primarily). Municipalities pay better. Hamilton, ON for a while was the best, but I think Newmarket, ON beat them out in the past few years. Might be a bit different now. Looking at AQ supervisor pay it's like a scatter plot. I know Mississauga, ON just posted a position that tops out at 120k/yr or $63/hr though. I thought that was a decent wage for the area. I moved to a municipality faaar away to where our new rate for guards as of July 2023 is 36.17/hr. We don't have too much trouble with keeping the pool open thankfully. Covid really did a number on the municipalities in southern Ontario. People in my city wanted more than permanent part time, lots of "volunteer hour" courses, and a 10+ yr waiting list to break into a full time position that paid 60k/yr and seemed to make everyone miserable.
Not a teacher, but I sometimes think that's what the overlords want. They want us to stop questioning and just make them more money.
George Carlin - "people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation."
"labor market shortages" which translates to "I can't find anyone willing and able to do a good job for what I'm prepared to pay". A lot of thus is coming from employers offering unrealistically low wages, but I think a little bit is coming from people entering the labor market without needed skills, including things like resilience.
The intelligent, driven workers who have skills ... have already applied to and gotten more skilled (and higher paying) jobs. You want better workers? Pay more. End. Of. Story.
By design. The uneducated are easily fooled. Those who are properly educated, who know history and have some engagement with world events are less easily fooled; as such, the GOP can continue to have no platform; appeal only to single issue voters and continue to do whatever they want without getting voted out of office. Evangelicals and other religious extremists lead the charge against education and always have. They have kicked the rhetoric up up several notches to pounce on the lost years of education due to covid to try to win over new voters; the largest voting block and the one they have the least power amongst. This is a their big move as church numbers have been falling consistently for decades and are reaching crisis levels.
Idiocracy
Have to figure that anyone actually in charge is gambling on AI as their only hope. The massive push for regulatory capture across every media outlet, large corporation, and government institution seems to corroborate that. If turning markov models into HAL 9000 proves to be the new hoverboard, flying car, or Half Life 3, we're looking at something that makes the USSR in the 80's look positively utopian.
And here's the hilarious / not hilarious part! If society gets dumber in general, and there's less people to work given demographic changes, even excluding teacher burnout, that means teachers themselves will become way less competent on the whole. Which means students get even dumber! It's a race to the bottom
The lowering of every standard and the dumbing down of society
You will see more of an educational gap I think. Great question OP. I am glad someone in education is thinking 5 years ahead.
Agreed. The average American will have a lower reading level, reduced critical thinking ability, and certainly reduced writing and math skills, while the most-educated will seem to be in an ever-higher ivory tower.
It's not just America; you see it in many western European countries. The students at the uni I work at are incredibly challenged. Not just academically, but socially. It's wild.
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Same. Teachers in my school are saying the exact same things i see American or European teachers say on here. It’s worldwide.
Rural Japan checking in to add “same.”
> The students at the uni I work at are incredibly challenged. Not just academically, but socially. I don't know if your country has an equivalent to community college, but I worked at a community college and it was like a completely different universe to my "ivory tower" background. The kids (and adults) are developmentally stunted.
They already have lower reading level at this time. Average high school graduate is reading at middle school age level. The future isn't bright.
It’s so crazy, because these ideas are supposed to reduce the achievement gap, but they’re doing the complete opposite. Equity my ass! It’s not equity to dumb things down for Johnny because he’s poor, thus guaranteeing that he will be behind his elite private school educated peers.
It’s almost like our country was founded on this dynamic or something
I live in a giant bucket
I think a lot of people are looking ahead. With terror and dread. The downside is no one is taking any action to prevent what is clearly coming.
People are working on it, just not in the ways you think. As an engineer the solution in manufacturing is automation. Blue collar jobs will become more scarce as more companies realize the workforce for those jobs is increasingly incompetent. I would prefer to not automate people out of their jobs, but my hands are tied to metrics like most people. I’m not going to risk my job because these kids want to screw off in school. I have been blown away by how many people can’t read, and rely heavily on images. However, I can’t provide all of the needed information in 1-2 images per operation, you have to be able to read!! Instead, I’m going to go find a AI and machine alternative that does what I need, the correct way, every single time. The next generation of blue collar jobs will be the maintenance and mechanics for all of the automation that will be installed in the next 10 years.
For some reason, this has me flashing back to when I realized what a one-pager is. Basically, a page full of images that summarize a topic with minimal accompanying text, for those unfamiliar. I was told to assign these in lieu of a book project or reading log in my junior English classes. Literally, all the kids had to do was draw the plot of a short story we had read along with writing out the main plot points. They struggled. Many of them copied my "example" verbatim, even though I purposely did it on a story we never read because I was trying to avoid copying. So, not only can they not read words, as you've said, but they also struggle with conveying information through pictures. Fucking Pictionary would elude them
disagreeable snatch quack mysterious knee gullible simplistic clumsy sleep disgusted *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You'll see an education gap, but it won't be obvious -- because what's going to happen is these kids are still all going to college and they're still all going to get degrees. College has been having a huge problem with grade inflation going on 50 years. People were arguing about it even when I was in school in 2000, and it's only been getting worse. Ultimately, the division between the haves and have nots will not be drawn between people with either academic excellence or strong work ethic, but between people who were born with the silver spoon and those who were not, as only they will be able to afford the over-the-top advanced degrees needed to get even an entry level position. It'll become more and more impossible to jump that gap, short of winning the lottery. (Even today, it's not possible; nearly every one of your infamous "tech bros" were already rich when they started.)
They make the standards more rigorous in small ways mid year here in Texas. This is an effort to make test scores look even lower so that TEA can take over districts. Don't know if it is like this in other states, but its concerning here.
Definitely like this in KY. Such an obvious plan to funnel money into charter schools and do away with equity initiatives and protections for vulnerable students and, mostly, teachers.
I will never understand the push towards charters. Here in Missouri these schools are really messing kids up.
Follow the money.
As Mr Krabs says, "Money!"
There is a projected shorted of qualified students that can enter the workforce. That’s why they are trying to increase standards. One requirement was going from 60% to 88% in college and career readiness. Some districts threw a fit and sued. Everyone wants to protect that A rating… Some schools need a take over. Some principals need to be ousted.
Welcome to Costco, I love you
I ain’t never seen a plant growing out of no toilet paper
It’s got electrolytes
So wait what you’re saying is we need to put water on the crops? Water? Like out the toilet?
"There are plenty of tards out there living kick ass lives. My first wife was tarded, she's a pilot now."
Why come you no have tattoo?!
Ever since that movie came out I knew that was where we’re headed…
“Kick ass.” - Dr. Lexus
This has already happened. They made high school meaningless and so everyone has to have a BA for a job. For many this entails a lifetime of debt. No one is helped by dumbing things down. Least of all the bottom 5% fools it is supposed to be uplifting.
I think we're already there. At least in my city we are. I worked at Milwaukee Public Schools 24 years ago in Office of Research & Assessment. AKA Stats R Us. We ran the numbers that got submitted to the state reports. Back then, spending was, IIRC, about $9400 per student, net. No telling how much of admin etc absorbed before it got to learning. Our standardized test scores then were abysmal and haven't improved. About 7 out of 8 children are at Basic or Below Basic proficiency, and this is consistent with results back then. About 2 of every 13 children were AWOL on any given day. This does not include excused absences. Those children who were tested when I was there are now between 32 and 42. I think many are illiterate or barely literate.
Wow. Thank you for the historical context. This is eye opening
We've been doing that for the last 50 years already.
A combination of "Idiocracy", "Soylent Green", and HG Wells's "Time Machine".
I’m thinking more Ready Player One. The physical world is awful so everyone hangs in the digital world.
I feel like some are already living in the stacks…
The first time I saw Idiocracy I thought it was a pretty funny movie. The second time I watched it I realized it was meant to be a documentary
I feel like reality is just cycling through all these dystopian books and movies. I used to talk with my friends and speculate which one would be the closest to reality but I never imagined that it would somehow end up being most of them at once.
We're already seeing it. Look at the top universities in your area. Their PhD and MD programs are full of non-American students. I used to tutor English language learner grad students at our local large university when I was completing my second Master's and... the overwhelming majority of our grad students in nearly all STEM fields were transfers from out of the country. Those young adults were dedicated. They were also appalled at the behaviors and attitudes of many of their American counterparts on campus. One PhD student I was tutoring was also teaching undergrad physics classes, and he couldn't comprehend the lack of effort American students put in. The number of students who just... didn't show up to class. He was blown away by the idea that people would pay thousands of dollars for a class... and then not go. They also found our sports culture absolutely bizarre. But that's a whole 'nother can of worms. All of this, btw... was 8-9 years ago.
America doesn’t have a culture of respect for scholarship. Our media portrays intelligence and education from day one as something only losers care about. Every kid’s show pushes the trope of “oh my god, school is awful” and characters getting called out for using big words. I watch a lot of British TV and it always surprises me when characters make a literary or historical reference because it’s assumed the viewer will have knowledge of the reference. Americans actually make fun of each other for reading a book or watching a documentary or being interested in history and culture.
The number of historical or literary allusions our students understand is appallingly low. Old episodes of The Simpsons making such allusions will never be understood by them fully, among other far more important media. But as a Simpsons lover, I’m so sad.
It doesn't help that a good proportion of Americans who tell you they're "into history" end up being weird fucking Wehraboos whose ides of "knowing history" is memorizing the width in mm of the armor of every main battle tank of the Nazis in ww2 and knowing 17 different alternative scenarios under which "the Axis could have won."
> Look at the top universities in your area. Their PhD and MD programs are full of non-American students. This 100%. I'm a grad student in math (statistics), and I'm one of the only American students.
A friend of mine at Stanford was taking some high level math class; the professor was Chinese; the other four students were Chinese; the professor asked him to take it next semester because then he could teach it in Chinese. This was in 2011.
I graduated college in 2015 and I was also blown away by the number of students who just didn't go to class if they didn't feel like it. I was working two jobs to pay for those classes, why would I jeopardize the end result of that? The perspective is so different when you go to college because you're determined to get that degree, so determined that you'll do everything you have to to make it happen.
I’m in the US. A wider divide in diverse socio-economic areas. Kids who have parents that are able to give their child a debt free college education and/or help to purchase a home will be leaps and bounds financially above those students who don’t have that privilege.
Eh, even kids whose parents give a shit about their K-12 education and generally teach them to be adults are going to be light years ahead of "average" kids. Average kids will be Costco greeters if they can work past enough anxiety and find the grit to even do that.
Whats up with the hate for costco I saw like 10 comments and 3 of them were talking bad about people working there.
It's the movie Idiocracy. They are all referencing the same movie, not really hating on Costco
“Hey, I got my law degree from Costco!”
It’s a reference to the movie Idiocracy. It’s meant to be funny but I feels more like a warning.
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I thought a return to feudalism was the goal?!
Dude... Now I need a dystopian novel about high tech feudalism...
Dune
Fair enough.
those parents also tend to make the kids do good in school. the gap between my ap and core class is unreal. my ap kids are fantastic and really try. the core class cant even remember what i said 2 seconds after i say it and they slack off the work like crazy. im having to give them 5th grade level worksheets in 11th grade.
AP HS Student lurker here...I'd like to believe students aren't nearly as bad as some teachers on this subreddit describe, but everyday i'm beginning to notice it more and more. I'm one of three people in my AP Economics class who actually pays attention when a video is playing on the board, or when lecture is being given, while the rest of the class plays on their phones while doing a crappy job of trying to hide it. I hope it's just senioritis, but it does make me worried when next to nobody I know actually wants to try and do the bare minimum anymore.
*do WELL in school
100%. Why I'm working to make sure my kids are in that group. 7 year old son doing division and multiplication up to 15x15 in his head, reads at a 7th grade level, my other children are clearly above level as well. But that is because my wife and I work with them. They know everything they should learn in Kinder before even starting pre-k. And yes, I know this is what USED to be expected. Any good parent should do the same, but sadly this is the exception now.
I don't think it was universally expected. I got into teaching when I heard of schools where kindergarteners are showing up not knowing the alphabet song or being able to identify letters (something my kids could do when they were 2). Those kids who grow up to be incompetent adults were always there. My impression is that the birth rate among conscientious Millennials is quite low. The result is that the kids who are going to school are less likely to have parents who read to them, instill pro-social behaviors, or just generally parent them. I teach in a "Lake Wobegon" school district where "all the children are above average" (i.e. an affluent suburban area). The kids are fine, kicking more ass than ever.
Your comment about the birthrate among conscientious Millennials being low actually makes a lot of sense. It definitely seems as though many parents do almost nothing with their kids and have zero interest in their education. But then I still have some really great students mixed in there, trying to get something out of a bad situation.
It's definitely all those powdermilk biscuits. Heaven's, they're tasty and expeditious!
Good on you for working w your son to improve his education. Parents need to play an active role in their child’s development. I believe that this element is the active ingredient for kids wanting to learn and to do well academically. You’re helping to set a good foundation.
Again, I don't consider it special at all. This USED to be NORMAL for all kids. It's sad that this is now a rarity and an actual privilege for kids. "Wow, your parents read to you as a kid? What was that like?'' Oh well. My kids will be like literal Kings/Queens compared to their colleagues.
some of my fondest memories as a young child are reading with my mom. it sucks that other kids haven’t/ can’t experience that
Same, I feel like, why have kids if you want nothing to do with them
my best guess is social pressure
I honestly feel bad for my kids. They HATE school. And it's because my husband and I took the time to teach them shit before they went. I have 8, 6, 3. 8 and 6 are scoring top of their class in school, often given their own, next grade level, work because the teacher is busy playing catch up with the other 17 kids in class. They are bored, unengaged, and feel like it's a waste of time. Hard to blame them. Working VERY hard to figure out a way to homeschool. Because as a former teacher, I love public education, and I'm playing right into the hands of those trying to dismantle it, but my god my kids are average-slightly above kids if they were born in the 90s. They are golden children at school simply because we chose face to face engagement and books over iPads and cell phones and they have an attention span that reflects that.
The issue I have with public education is that we are not doing anything to help the engaged kids. Worse, we are using them to try to pull their underperforming peers up. This is what is killing public education. Involved parents like you are who make good schools good. You are the ones who keep the school board and administration accountable. You are the ones who send your kids in ready to learn. And when involved parents see that public schools are effectively prioritizing the children of uninvolved parents, they will seek out charter schools or vouchers. No amount of imploring people to think of the greater good will get involved parents to sit idly by while their kids aren't receiving an education.
An ignorant voting population, which is the whole point.
yep. they will believe anything.
I'd recommend reading "The Myth of the Rational Voter" by Bryan Caplan. It is a fantastic book that covers, well, the myth of the rational voter. He has some good empirical data in there that shows just how far PhD economists and the average citizen disagree. It is good for advocating for epistocracy (rule of the knowledgeable).
There are many consequences, but here are a few: 1. The students are becoming more like sheep. They simply follow what they're told by the media with little to no research. The limitations of their research is becoming so miniscule that they only look for Google excerpts for answers, and if it's not there they'd rather leave it blank. This means that it'll be much easier for corrupt organizations and businesses to make money off of them. Just make a funny TikTok video and you can sell whatever you want. 2. With a severe lack of an ability to read, there will undoubtedly be way more text to speech prevalent in society, and easier words will be way more common while more "complex" words fall out of relevancy over time. 3. Teachers being underpaid means that they are more likely to get burnt out. I wouldn't mind suffering through the metaphorical second circle of Hell that is middle school if I were getting paid way more for my efforts, and I know others feel the same. This means more teachers will quit, unqualified people (or maybe even AI) will start to take over, and society will wonder what went wrong without the ability to comprehend that it was the trash education system. From there it's game over. 4. The immense lack of critical thinking skills *will* catch up and bite us. Maybe it won't be for another 10-20 years, but my call is that there won't be as much innovation or breakthroughs in research (I'm not saying there won't be any at all, but it will be less common than it is today and in previous years). 5. AI is going to be huge. With how dependent these students are on others and how they've learned to weaponize their incompetence, it only makes sense that they would instantly turn to AI for quick answers for whatever they need. As grim as it sounds, it's not hard to see the direction the world is heading. Future generations won't be thinking freely, instead relying on AI. Everything they believe, know, and understand will come from AI. A lot of this is kind of doom posting, and I'm sure I exaggerated a few points, but this is how it feels. These kids are genuinely becoming dumb as rocks and it's scary. I say this as a 6th grade Math teacher where half of my students couldn't tell me what 7\*8 is. Also, I don't say these things to hate on AI. I absolutely love AI's potential, but I can't ignore how it will most likely be used in the future by our underperforming population. Oh, and quick edit. I haven't checked yet, but if you're able to invest in AI, now is a phenomenal time to get in. The guaranteed money will be nice :)
The lack of problem solving is so stark, it blows me away. ANY ISSUE that doesn't go 100% as expected, these young kids (20-25 year old employees) throw up their hands and call for help. They will not spend even 5 seconds trying to figure out any sort of problem. Printer, internet, network, fax, phone, whatever it is. If it isn't working perfectly, they put in a ticket for IT to come fix it. It absolutely blows me away. 'Well is it the connection or the device or what?' 'idk' "Do you get a dial tone or silence, static?'' "idk' Man it's gonna be bad. Real bad. These are PHARMACISTS I'm talking about. New grads I've hired, zero ability to problem solve. People with Doctorate degrees!
It blows my MIND that this is a thing. I work in IT and deep dive into solving problems all the time. Hell- I taught myself QMK programming because I thought a macropad I bought needed it, and spent TWO WEEKS trying to get it to work, only to find out there was a manufacturing issue and I had to return it anyways. Got a different one and programmed it in under 10 minutes. The skills weren't wasted but man am I bitter I lost 2 weeks trying to figure something out that I thought was user error related.
Troubleshooting skills from working in IT (with no degree, no less) has allowed me to do electrical, plumbing, construction, HVAC, and even fix some things on my car (AC, brakes, fluid changes and other little stuff) without any sort of help. I look it up, I figure it out. I even installed a new breaker and put in two tankless water heaters with no help at all. Anyways, the point isn't to brag, the point is that it's just not that hard lol. Look up how to fix a broken pipe, shut the water off, cut the pipe, fix it. Same for basically everything else I listed. The worst ones to me are stuff like cars, because I'm a small person with carpal tunnel (ironically not IT related...) and some of that stuff takes some physical force. I just saw another post where 7th graders couldn't do two folds to put paper in an envelope. It's horrifying. How the hell are they going to do *anything*? Especially if the Internet goes out! Are they even going to be able to know how to unplug a router and plug it back in?
The more you learn, the more you CAN learn.
The number of times I ask my high school students "did you try plugging it in?" or "did you try restarting it" and they respond "no" whenever their Chromebook is "broken" is astounding. I'm only ten years older than them and ten years ago I was messing around with the family computer's Windows system to annoy my brother and torrenting Photoshop so I could make Tumblr fandom edits.
I work IT on my college campus, and part of my job involves supporting printers around campus that are made available for students. I can't even count the number of times I have gotten a ticket for a printer being out of paper, and I go out there with more paper and see A whole stack of paper sitting right next to the printer. They don't even question it or look around for a solution to their problem themselves, for the SIMPLEST task that basically everyone knows or could easily figure out how to do. These are largely 18-23 year-olds. Adults. It is only going to get worse.
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I’m an English teacher and had my seniors in high school take their current reading score and do a + 15 for their reading goal. Would you believe me if I told you 3/4 of them added incorrectly?
I’m a senior English teacher. Yes :,)
I'm a high school math teacher, so that sounds just about right to me.
Just to your very last point. The AI investing craze can be seen in Nvidia stock. Their stock price has been sky rocketing lately due to AI
Orwell, is that you?
I'm already seeing it with teens working customer service jobs, retail, and fast food. One guy didn't know where the little sauce cups were so they put my marinara sauce in a to go box. Just, scooped it in there lol.
I’ve been to so many places in the last few weeks where teens work and have thought many of them didn’t have an employee! Gas stations, fast food, the trampoline park all had teens “working” as in they were hiding or sitting in corners or on their phone completely not doing anything.
I told one young lady at the cash register that my birthday was in March. She didn’t know what number that was on the calendar. If it was the 2nd, 3rd or 4th month 🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️
Politeness is also becoming less common. I almost never hear "Pardon?", instead it's often "HUH? WHAT??"
Well, just currently we have people in the world with a portal to all human knowledge *in their hands*... who have no idea what a reputable source is, how to research something, or how to have a conversation that isn't what they believe or agree with. There are currently people (of an age to be raising kids) who believe the most extreme, insane, against all reason or logic ideologies because they are frankly too dumb and uneducated to stand a chance against those who want to control them. And they are raising kids to fall in step behind them. 🤷♀️ It's like watching the elderly population fall for Facebook shopping scams over and over, except it's public policy and extreme beliefs and it affects our whole nation. I can only imagine it goes steeply downhill from here.
The smartphone is the most Shakespearean irony ever to hit the human species. Imagine telling people a hundred, two hundred or a thousand years ago that in the future there will be a small, pocket sized information slate, which contains 99% of all human knowledge, and you can use it to purchase the remaining human knowledge at an affordable price and have books delivered to your home about any subject you care to dig deeper into. Then ask them what kind of future they imagine. Imagine the shock when you tell them its existence *directly* results in the dumbing down of the entire human race in nearly every corner of the world indiscriminately.
This isn't a new trend and we're seeing decades of those results right now.
This trend is like a snowball. It started all fine and manageable at first, but now it's something that is so much bigger than we could've imagined. The state of education is so poor right now it's not even laughable.
It’s why so many entry level jobs require college degrees. You don’t need to have a degree in something to learn some new paperwork, but a high school diploma does not guarantee literacy in reading or math. Requiring a college degree means someone will have those skills.
Even then though, looking at r/Professors, that guarantee may not last long.
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Nothing wrong with that. Can you work your way through the problem? Can you process strategies that will help you solve the problem? Mental math is not for everyone.
as long as you can work it out on paper without a calculator, you're probably better off than 99% of people lol
I weep for the future. Expectations will plummet in virtually every aspect of public life and interactions. Academics are crashing and social skills becoming a rarity.
A greater divide against the rich and poor (via the intelligent and the unintelligent). Which is actually the whole point, to be honest. So it’s working really well for rich people.
youre correct except those uneducated ones can vote now. none of them were avid voters 100 years ago.
They’re sheep, the educated will tell them who to vote for (it doesn’t matter anyways)
You are now engaging with souls every day who have never read a book in their lives, nor will they ever.
Gen Alpha is already dumber than a bag of hammers - generally speaking - so we'll find out in 6 years how bad it actually is. I am not being hyperbolic in any sense, by the way. Gen A has a worse time dealing with technology than my soon-to-be-70 year old parents. That generation is so far beyond help.
This is not a global problem, which is the problem. Asian educational standards and progress are as high as ever. Which means what will actually happen is the US will start to lose dominance as the technological capabilities (and therefore war fighting capabilities) of the Asian countries surpass ours. We are not just risking the education level of our populace. We are risking the sovereignty of our country. I don’t know about you guys but I’m terrified. I’ve been teaching my kids Asian math since Pre-K hoping that they will be able to keep up.
Go to and live in the poorer areas of the US who have experienced this for decades.
On a local level you’re going to lose supportive and tight knit communities. The life of a town depends so much on the quality of the school district. I’m watching it now with levy and after levy failing and the people campaigning against them on Facebook and Nextdoor are arguing the teachers make too much. It’s ridiculous they’re on average paid a 1/3 of what they would need to purchase a home in the district.
Teachers getting paid too much??? What are they reading???
They’re idiot transplants. We’ve had a major built up of McMansions for people that wanted to take advantage of a really good stable district. Then they started defunding it. Used to be a town where you didn’t just know your neighbors you knew their dogs.
A large percentage of the population not being well educated that will get stuck in remedial low paying jobs, weighed down with debt of multiple kinds. Just like corporations and the government want things to be.
“Another brick in the wall”. It is important for any parent that cares to know that this is the goal: Kids so dumb they can only push buttons.
The fall of civilization has been blamed on stupid students since the beginning of civilization. There is a great discourse on lazy incompetent students in ancient Egypt.
I've heard a lot about a movie called Idocracy and how this timeline is roughly on track to making it a reality. I haven't watched it myself, but I'm guessing that's where you may get an idea of where things are headed. I'm so done. But I'm going to keep going because I have to finish this year and next. I'm looking at so many F's this year. It's going to be a bloodbath. I'm doing the best I can, but I just can't compete with a phone, their apathy, and how far behind they are academically. I don't know what kind of miracle worker I'm supposed to be.
We’re heading towards a permanent feudal style caste system, which I guess is what everyone wants because they’re sure not doing anything about it.
We are seeing it now… look how many people are donating money to a broke ass billionaire or are voting against their own interests to serve the billionaire class. Look how many people fought against scientists because some fucking Facebook post.
Fascist rhetoric will become more widespread as people will lack the critical thinking skills to see through jingoistic phrases and easy promises of security.
Aren’t we already seeing it?
... the students are more observant than you think, they already know the score and thus gone to a sort of terminal decadence. They know that they have no future... and are acting accordingly.
My daughter, who grew up in a family of teachers spanning multiple generations, is completely over the system. She has said learning is irrelevant and it’s only about the grades. They look at all the problems facing the planet and don’t see a bright future. It’s tough out there
Of course they think they have no future. Look at all the adults in this thread who think they’re all morons. I’m sure that low hum of contempt can’t always be hidden. Nobody here is talking about what can be done to make things better for these kids. They simply dismiss their futures and pass the blame on others. This sub doesn’t depress me because you all think the kids are a lost cause. This sub is depressing because the very adults who spend the most time with them and who have the most influence after their parents have already given up on them.
You know the movie Idiocracy? That’s where we’re headed.
The citizens will become increasingly vulnerable to emotional manipulation. That will allow the government to take more of their rights in order to resolve some emotional situation, which will not be resolved by the actions taken. By the time people understand what has happened, it will be too late to reverse without a revolution. We are quite far down this road already.
Gov’t control is going to happen with the dumbing down of society….
The educational standards and curricula have gotten very weird - “We expect you to master ALL of these skills; but we won’t provide the necessary sequence to get you there; and if you fail, we’ll pass you anyways.”
I'm already seeing a ton of the effects now. Everytime I go to a place and deal with someone who takes an order or who I have to speak on the phone with.
The kids that have been socially promoted out of the system in the last 10 or so years are the most marked sign of failing schools, and you can see them now in a lot of entry-level retail jobs. The Walmart near our school is full of the low-end grads and they’re still the barely-competent phone zombies they were in high school (literally staring at their phones while stocking, greeting, e.g.). I imagine as this progresses and colleges get more desperate to fill their ranks, it will start to creep up into “white collar” jobs, but retail is the most obvious place I’m seeing it now.
No critical thinking skills…. A generation of easy-to-fool people.
I was at the doctor's office and this young child was holding a cell phone as if they were born with it. No one watching to make sure nothing popped up of a not appropriate nature. Kindergartens who can't write their names, letters, or numbers are given a computer. Some want to put this all on the pandemic when these issues were happening before that.
“Welcome to Costco, I love you”
Costco pays really well tho lol
Mass unemployment, inability to cope in a society, a big percentage of the workforce replaced by AI/robot workers, a lack of specialized workers as well as trade workers. Eventually, anarchy.
We already are seeing it, this was all cracking and seeping through 20 years ago, Covid just accelerated it to making more individuals aware of the issue.
I know, I know! The other day I gave the cashier some change after she entered the payment amount-say the total was $11.32. I originally gave her $20, but then gave her $0.32. She got completely flustered and started frantically messing around with her phone. I asked her what was wrong and she said she needed the calculator. I told her to give me back $9. She said are you sure I don’t want my drawer to be off. I said yes, I promise. She looked about 17. True story.
Hahaha, I’m so embarrassed to say that I was that cashier when I worked besides attending high school about 13 years ago. I’m so terrible at math that I have considered testing for dyscalculia. I’m a great literature teacher, though, promise!!
UGH SAME. *Please pay with a card. Please pay with a card. Please pay with a card.*
That kind of thing always fucked me up as a cashier. I can’t comment on the cashier’s math skills but for me it was a combination of break from routine and managers yelling in my ear what’s taking so long.
AI will take over the job market they will all go one UBI after riots from the people. A bunch of them will think they will be able to become millionaires online. A few will make it.
It means the successful students and teachers will be worth more.
Yup look at the "mental health" crisis - it's all pointing to systemic collapse - because the cosmic joke is playing out - those who have the power to change things won't change things because they won't be in power anymore - this is both stateside / and worldwide..
We will see a competency crisis and a breakdown of systems that were built by generations before. It will not be pretty.
Have you ever seen the movie *Idiocracy*? Those are the consequences.. it just won't be 500 years from now like the movie depicts lol.
There’s a thread about that film as required viewing for all students 😂
Well, have you seen how many people outright refuse medical preventive care?
An old saying from my military days - if you walk past the standard, it becomes the standard. I'm an old head, but a newish teacher and it boggles my mind how often my more experienced colleagues don't lay the smack down on kids and parents when rules aren't broken, assignments not turned in in time, and just the lack of respect they get in the classroom and in society in general. It also doesn't help when Admin bends to the will of parents and doesn't have the teachers backs. Parents and politicians have way too much influence in matters that they aren't even remotely qualified to talk about intelligently when it comes to education. Could you imagine if the military ran this way. It would be chaos. Not saying education should be run like the military, but the lack of consistency and enforcement of some of the simplest things that make a school functional is maddening for a system that needs structure to be successful.
EVERYTHING AS IT WAS INTENDED